That’s when you tell them no and file online
You know what? In many other cases, the agents have reviewed my calculations and adjusted them—in my favour.
They are not all horrible a&&holes.
Guy
Which office did you work with? The non beimen tax officers are nice and friendly and offer to add deductions. The beimen ones find ways to deny deductions and recategoeize income as salary and I have to point out that I qualify for certain deductions. That’s been my experience the last few times filing. Avoid beimen tax office like the plague. They are also the harshest on providing detailed documentation on all deductions.
Isn’t the tax bureau we deal with connected to the city or county of residence as indicated on our A(P)RCs?
Are you saying I could just pull up in Miaoli and file my taxes there? (Given how that corrupt fiefdom behaves, I’d prefer not too. But are you saying it’s possible?)
Guy
All foreigners have the option of filing in beimen because that’s the central tax office for foreigners. I got sent there because my gold card deductions were complicated, and I don’t live in central Taipei.
Had quite a pleasant experience at my local tax office and the tax officers were all quite friendly. The beimen tax officer denied deductions added by my local tax office and were quite strict on finding documentation for everything which took up a lot of my time.
Filed and paid my first tax in tw this year. Did everything online, took 10 mins back to back. I actually selected during the tax filing that I left before 31 dec (was in Italy for christmas holiday), but all deductions and exemptions seems were kept and was charged what I expected. Paid immediately on-line via credit card.
Hate to deal with bureaucrats, especially tw ones. Best to do all urself imho
Yeah, but it’s not over until you hold your tax certificate in your hands. Until that’s the case, they might still ask for more documents and stuff unfortunately…
Fingers crossed then
If it’s your first time filing, they might email you and ask for your foreign tax return (if you have one)
Unfortunately, I am speaking from personal experience: Last year, just like you, I did my taxes online and was amazed how easy and straightforward everything was.
After some months, I inquired at the tax office about when I would receive the tax certificate.
They requested tons if additional documents - and it ended with me having to pay another 50k in taxes in cash at the tax office because I couldn’t explain an amount in one of the tables which the filing software had calculated automatically. And unfortunately, I couldn’t recheck because said software becomes inaccessible after the tax season ends…
This year, I am better prepared and have taken some screenshots of the importance calculations.
And I think I know the reason now: When inputting overseas salary, the tax software will automatically divide it by the days spent in Taiwan. So if earned 100k, but only 300/365 days in Taiwan, it will only input 82k as income. This year, it will at least show what happened. I am quite certain that this is what happened last year, too, but I didn’t really know about this and thus couldn’t explain why the amount was off. And of course the people at the tax bureau also wouldn’t think about this as the reason and just assumed I tried to under-declare my income…
It’s not. You always have to send “supplementary documents via mail…”
See there’s your issue. You somehow missed the part of it needing extra documents… Because I’ll be honest… while it seems simple… it really actually isn’t and involves scanning and mailing physical documents.
See by doing this in person you can blame it on them… I had a friend who even went in with his sons household registration paper as proof of having a kid… THEY DEDUCTED THE KID AND HIS EX WIFE!!! -despite the household registration paper clearly saying they were divorced- (They were divorced for over 5 years!!! 
) Been 2 years since and also his income is quite high at over 200,000NTD a month so it dropped the taxes by a significant amount. Thank god she didn’t file in that year. (even then he could’ve blamed them…).
Just go in and file… Saves you hassle
Yeah when you file at your local office (as long as it’s not beimen), even though you have to line up, you can be a bit more sure that they won’t come back and bug you later for documentation or deny a deduction. Since it’s submitted by the tax office instead of yourself.
Worst case as a foreigner filing online is to have it routed to beimen office and they do an audit of your home country’s tax returns to check for missing income and then decide to categorize all your foreign passive income as salary. Or ask you to provide all kinds of documentation that’s notarized and what not, sending you on a month of finding documentation for them.
I’ve gone through four tax filings now.
To be fair to TW, domicile is not that straightforward as a concept.
Having PR doesn’t equate to being domiciled in other countries either. E.G. in the UK, you can be non-resident but still domiciled there, and conversely you can be UK resident but not UK domiciled.
Having PR somewhere also doesn’t necessarily mean you are tax resident of that place. E.G. in HK you can have a permanent residence ID, but you only need to visit HK for one day in 3 years to retain it (but you wouldn’t be considered tax resident there as you aren’t actually present for most of the time).
Continuing with the UK example, domicile is legally considered to be your “permanent home”. To help clarify, many advisors suggest it as being “where you plan to die”. If you were born in the UK, then it’s actually quite difficult to lose domicile because you need to prove you have minimized or completely cut any connections and links back to the UK, such as owning property or having close family still living in there, and at the same time you need to prove multiple strong links to your new place of domicile.
If you were born outside the UK then achieving UK domicile is also quite tricky because you need to demonstrate that you have cut links to your original country (but there are tax benefits if you don’t take up UK domicile in this case, so many people don’t bother).
You can only have one legal domicile, at least as far as UK law is concerned…and this may also be the case for other countries. But residence is a different matter, and you can be resident of multiple countries, depending on the individual rules in each place.
Your legal domicile becomes particularly relevant if you die, as your will is would be dealt with under the laws of your place of domicile, and not your place of residence (though there maybe over-riding rules covering assets that you held in your place of residence).
Yeah, that rings a bell…
I remember the guy rejecting one of my statements with the words: “Oh, that looks like you just created that yourself using Excel” 
As a foreigner living in Taipei, I don’t have much choice except Beimen, do I…?
Do you have another one close by, such as Datong, Shilin, Beitou etc, they are all in Taipei. Beitou one is pretty friendly.
I thought all foreigners living in Taipei need to go to Beimen regardless of where they live?
Well, to late now for this year - already filed online again and hope it will be a bit more smooth than last year.
I’ve always filed at Beitou. Perhaps it’s time to relocate to Taichung or Kaohsiung where it’s cheaper and the tax office is more easy going.
It’s always been fine for me. They did e-mail me one year asking for extra documentation about my overseas income (as stipulated in that table with the required documentation per income category), but I told them “no I don’t have it and can’t get it” and they said it was okay lol.
I’m not sure what the tax office could practically have done if they’d chosen to insist. AFAIK, if you can’t or won’t prove your income they’re allowed to estimate it based on what they think a foreigner living here should be earning, but that would likely have been less than what I actually earned and declared, so… fine by me, I don’t mind paying taxes on that amount instead.
It definitely wouldn’t have been worth the time, hassle, and money getting documents issued and notarized in several different countries, anyway.
TW is a civil law country, like Italy. In Italy domicile is a declaration, is where you elect to have your interests and affairs and can be found with the highest probability.
I don’t. Being a registered abroad resident Italian I have no tax obligation in Italy, and working for a HK company with being in HK for less than 60 days for fiscal year I don’t have any tax obligation in HK too. So really just in tw